Friday, August 08, 2014

1. Teaching Math In 1950sA logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

2. Teaching Math In 1970sA logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math In 1980sA logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit ? Yes or No

4. Teaching Math In 1990sA logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20 Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math In 2000sA logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it's ok).

Series of stumbles at hearings prompts $545K witness training contract

After suffering through a striking number of rough grillings at the hands of Congress, State Department officials have approved a contract worth up to $545,000 to help train themselves for how to brief lawmakers and to testify at hearings.

The contract with Orlando, Florida-based AMTIS, Inc. includes classes entitled “Communicating with Congress: Briefing and Testifying” and pays for one-on-one sessions to hold a mock hearing with questioners playing the role of lawmakers asking hard questions of the would-be witnesses.

On Tuesday, NBC News’ Chris Jansing made an appearance from the White House on MSNBC’s “The Reid Report.” During that appearance, she evaluated President Barack Obama as this week’s U.S.-Africa Leaders summit was underway in Washington, D.C.

However, Jansing made one small error in her analysis by misidentifying Obama’s orgins.

“Yeah, the fact that he’s from Kenya and the fact that when he was elected there were expectations from the African continent that he would do great things for them,” Jansing said.

Jansing 10 minutes later reappeared in on that broadcast to correct herself and say Obama’s father was from Kenya.

According to a senior health fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the world has no strategic plan to contain the worst Ebola outbreak in history while scientists are saying an outbreak on U.S. soil would require sweeping measures.

Total quarantine of cities or sections of infected cities and restrictions on air travel could be expected.

“We’re now in a perfect storm,” Laurie Garrett said in a CFR conference call Thursday in which she described the United Nations World Health Organization as “bankrupt” and drowning in debt. “There is no strategic plan for how this epidemic will be brought under control.”More

In 2006, we wrote a book with Addison Wiggin called Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis. The idea of the book was as follows:

Empires are not the result of conscious thought; they happen when a group is large enough and powerful enough to impose itself on others.

But empires are expensive. They are typically financed by theft and forced tribute. The imperial power conquers… steals… and then requires that its subjects pay “taxes” so that it can protect them.

The US never got the hang of it. It conquers. But it loses money on each conquest.

How does it sustain itself?

With debt.

It doesn’t take tribute from the rest of the world; it borrows from it. As far as we know, no other empire has ever tried to finance itself by borrowing.

But it is a special kind of debt. The US borrows in its own currency – which it can print as it chooses. If the burden of repayment is too high, in theory, the Fed can just print more dollars to satisfy its obligations.

The second Sunday of August to the following Saturday is designated as Shop Maryland tax-free Week each year. That means qualifying apparel and footwear $100 or less, per item, are exempt from the state sales tax. Accessory items are not included. The Shop Maryland Tax-Free Week for 2014 is Sunday, August 10 - Saturday, August 16.

Additionally, there is a tax-free three-day weekend every February during which the state sales tax will not apply to the sale of any Energy Star Product listed below, or solar water heater. The Shop Maryland Energy Tax-Free weekend for 2015 is February 14 - 16.

Energy Star Product means an air conditioner, clothes washer or dryer, furnace, heat pump, standard size refrigerator, compact fluorescent light bulb, light-emitting diode (LED) light bulbs, dehumidifier, or programmable thermostat that has been designated as meeting or exceeding the applicable Energy Star Efficiency requirements developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Neurologist and author of "One Nation," Dr. Ben Carson said that the Centers for Disease Control should keep the need to balance patient privacy and the public’s need to know in mind when it comes to the Ebola virus.

“Certainly I’m a strong proponent of privacy of health care information,” Carson said on Wednesday's broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Your World.' “But you can certainly reveal that a patient has been tested and is negative to allay hysteria because when you have a situation where you're acting if a secretive manner, people have a tendency to assume the worst. So you have to be smart enough to weigh one thing against the other. You can't just sort of have blinders on and say ‘privacy, privacy, privacy’ and there's a riot going on outside. So, that's where wisdom comes in.”

After several months of dialogue, Atlantic General Hospital settled a potentially problematic lawsuit over stormwater fees with the town of Berlin last month.

The suit, filed in October 2013, alleged the town unfairly charged AGH more than $9,000 in annual fees. The hospital, which operates as a nonprofit, manages its stormwater onsite and does not believe it causes or contributes to any stormwater problems in Berlin.

Both sides settled out of court on July 14. Berlin Mayor Gee Williams said there were two steps to the settlement.

Schools across the USA are bracing for as many as 50,000 immigrant children who would start school this fall, most of them unaccompanied by their families.

"We haven't started school yet, so we are all just holding our breath to see what's going to come on the first day of school," says Caroline Woodason, assistant director of school support for Dalton Public Schools in Georgia.

Under federal law, all children are entitled to a free public education, regardless of their immigration status.

Lewes, DE – Detectives with the Delaware State Police Criminal Investigations Unit have arrested a Georgetown woman in connection with burglarizing three gas stations.

The first incident occurred on January 21, 2014 at the Uncle Willeys gas station located at 17581 Coastal Highway, Lewes when Dawn G. Tulowitzki, 36 of Georgetown used a hammer to smash a window out of the entry door and enter to steal approximately 150 cartons of cigarettes and $100.00 in cash. Tulowitzki struck the same gas station on March 2, 2014 when she stole 6 cartons of cigarettes and approximately $100.00 in cash. Tulowitzki then burglarized the Uncle Willeys located at 712 South DuPont Highway, Millsboro on March 9, 2014 when she again used a hammer to break the glass door and remove $100.00 and three packs of cigarettes. Detectives were able to gather this information through witness interviews in an unrelated matter and take Tulowitzki into custody on August 6, 2014 without incident.

Dawn Tulowitzki was charged with three counts of Burglary 3rd, two counts of Possession of Burglary Tools, three counts of Theft, and three counts of Criminal Mischief. She was arraigned at JP2 and committed to Delores J. Baylor Women’s Correction Institution on $9,500.00 secured bond.

The IRS won what might be Round One in a series of contests pitting tea party groups against the agency, with a federal judge rejecting a conservative group’s bid for a court-appointed forensics expert to hunt for ex-official Lois Lerner’s lost emails.

Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia said True the Vote’s lawsuit against the IRS failed to show “irreparable harm” in its injunction relief request and that “the public interest weighs strongly against the type of injunctive relief the plaintiff seeks.”

“Despite the general distrust of the defendants expressed by the plaintiff, the Court has no factual basis to concur with that distrust … and therefore concludes that the issuance of an injunction will not further aid in the recovery of the emails, if such recovery is possible, but will rather only duplicate and potentially interfere with ongoing investigative activities,” he wrote in a court memorandum posted Wednesday afternoon.

A mother who watched her cop son gunned down in front of her, his wife and his children allegedly at the hands of two illegal immigrants has vowed not to rest until his 'worthless piece of s**t' killers are dead.'

Heartbroken Marie Vega was on a family fishing trip with her husband Javier, son Javier Jr., his wife Paola and their three children when they were ambushed by two armed Mexican illegal immigrants who have been deported SIX times before in total.

Javier Jr and his father bravely tried to fight them off, but the off-duty Border Patrol Agent was fatally shot in the chest and Javier Sr was blasted in the hip.

Spying on students to keep them safe. When the new school year begins in two weeks, a Maryland district will be one of only four in the nation to use special software to track students' social media posts.

Washington County public schools plan to use the software program, Social Sentinel to track keywords that could indicate a threat.

If it catches keywords like "kill" or "bomb", the school will report it to police.

The Atlantic Coast Conference and the University of Maryland have settled their legal dispute over the Terrapins' exit from the league.

Under terms of a settlement announced Friday, the ACC will keep the roughly $31 million it had previously withheld from Maryland and the school will not owe the conference any more money.

In addition, lawsuits filed by both sides will be dismissed.

"This agreement allows everyone to fully focus their energy and efforts on prioritizing the student-athletes, especially in this significant time of change within the NCAA restructuring," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said in a statement. "We wish the University of Maryland well and appreciate their past contributions as we collectively look toward the future."

Maryland announced in late 2012 that it would leave the ACC -- the conference it helped create -- for the Big Ten.

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself; it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States is the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

First, I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close, I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.

The Europe you know is changing.

You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.

The city appears to have a continuing belief that costumed characters on the Boardwalk should be subject to criminal background checks, despite the city’s previous ill experience with a similar matter in federal court.

Councilman Brent Ashley pointed out at this week’s council meeting that the City of New York appears ready to embark down the path of regulating costumed performers in Times Square, a move which could provide direction for a renewed attempt in Ocean City.

“The City Council in New York is looking to vigorously license these characters, including background checks,” Ashley said. “Long story short, some of these people turned out to have criminal records.”

D.C. residents will vote in November on whether to legalize marijuana use in the nation’s capital after elections officials decided Wednesday to place the question on the ballot.

The three-member D.C. Board of Elections voted unanimously Wednesday morning to approve the ballot initiative, certifying that activists gathered the tens of thousands of voter signatures necessary to qualify for the Nov. 4 general election ballot.

Several of those activists attended Wednesday’s meeting and cheered the vote, which moves the District closer to joining Colorado and Washington as the only places in the nation where marijuana possession and cultivation are fully legal.

Choptank Electric CooperativeSHORE UP! Inc. has received an EmPOWER Grant to help Choptank Electric Cooperative residential members living in Wicomico and Worcester Counties improve the energy efficiency of their home.For a limited time, and on a first-come, first-serve basis, you may be eligible for a Comprehensive Energy Audit of your home and also qualify for improvements in energy efficiency that include upgrades in insulation, building envelope air-sealing and duct sealing at NO COST TO YOU! If you are interested, contact SHORE UP! Inc. at 410-749-1142 ext. 330 or ext. 356.

Lincoln, DE - The Delaware State Police have arrested both of the suspects involved in the Burglary to Wilson's Auction.

Within hours of releasing surveillance photos of the two subjects to local news outlets and posting to social media, their identities were quickly revealed to detectives who began looking into the incident. Tipsters identified the duo as Christopher J. Carter, 22 of Milford, and Christopher L. Willey, 22 of Lincoln.

On Wednesday July 6, 2014 around 1:00 p.m. a phone call from an anonymous person into the 9-1-1 center advised of a suspicious person standing outside of the Harrington Raceway and Casio south of Harrington. The caller also advised that the male looked like one of the suspects involved in the burglary to Wilson's Auction. When a trooper arrived at the casino, the male subject began fleeing on foot and discarding items out of his pockets while the trooper gave chase. He was finally captured by other responding troopers after the short foot pursuit and taken into custody without further incident. He was identified as Christopher J. Carter and upon conducting a search of his pockets, he was found to be in possession of 8 small bags of heroin.

Carter (Photo attached - white tank top) was transported to Troop 4 in Georgetown where he was formally charged with Burglary 3rd, Theft of a Firearm, Possession of a Firearm by a Person Prohibited, Theft over $1,500.00, Conspiracy 2nd, Possession of a Controlled Substance (Heroin), Tampering with Physical Evidence, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, and Resisting Arrest. He was arraigned at JP2 and committed to Sussex Correctional Institution on $19,000.00 secured bond.

Around 9:20 a.m. this morning (August 8, 2014), detectives were able to locate a vehicle that Christopher Willey (Photo attached - grey hooded sweatshirt) was last seen driving through tips received by the public and took him into custody without incident at the Red Mill Inn located at 16218 Coastal Highway north of Lewes. He was transported back to Troop 4 where he is currently awaiting arraignment on the charges of Burglary 3rd, Theft of a Firearm, Possession of a Firearm by a Person Prohibited, Theft over $1,500.00, and Conspiracy 2nd. Further investigation into the burglary revealed a fully loaded .357 revolver was removed from the safe and has not been recovered.

The Delaware State Police would like to thank everyone that provided information through the tip lines, social media, and direct phone calls to the detectives that helped lead to the arrest of both suspects.

In Virginia, they’re both Class 1 Misdemeanors - along with animal cruelty and larceny. One small notch below a felony. They’ll put you in jail for it. The speeding, I mean. Sexual battery? Meh. Give ‘em a fine, maybe an ankle bracelet, send ‘em on their way.

But Johnny Cochran help you if you get nabbed doing over 80 in Virginia. Or more than 20 MPH faster than any speed limit – no matter how preposterously under-posted.

A fellow car journalist over at Jalopnik just learned all about this . . . the hard way. Patrick George – I do not know him personally – was among a group of journalists out driving the new Camaro ZL1. (Your humble narrator is apparently on the outs with GM as I was not invited to this gig despite it being just a few hours’ drive away.) With a GM rep riding shotgun, George got clocked by one of Virginia’s Swinest – who apparently had nothing better to do that day – doing 93 in a posted 55. The “manufacturer tags” on the car did not help sway the enforcer of victimless crimes and Collector of the Revenue. George was issued a cite for “reckless” driving – statutorily defined (see here) in the state of Virginia as driving 80 MPH or faster than 20 over any speed limit.

As Obamacare sputters along, liberals are growing increasingly frustrated that it isn’t working the way it was supposed to. First, the Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion was optional, and then half the states opted not to expand. Even more states (36 so far) opted not to set up health-insurance exchanges and just let the feds do it themselves. Then last month the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the law doesn’t allow subsidies to be disbursed through federal exchanges.

For many on the left, the culprits here are the intransigent states that refuse to go along with the Obamacare scheme. At a conceptual level, the real culprit is therefore federalism — the Constitution’s separation of state and federal powers. As Slate’s Jamelle Bouie lamented last week, states have “too much discretion in administering the welfare state.” He claims that some state leaders — like Mississippi governor Phil Bryant — don’t really even want to have safety-net programs and therefore can’t be trusted to run them. Programs like Medicaid, he says, should be taken out of the hands of the states and turned over entirely to bureaucrats in Washington.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a University of Maryland project funded by the Department of Homeland Security, has designated the so-called sovereign citizen movement as the number one domestic terrorist threat in America.

Sovereign citizens do not constitute a cohesive movement, although the government characterizes them as such. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates around 100,000 Americans were “hard-core sovereign believers” in 2010 and an additional 200,000 were “just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges.”

The SPLC works with the DHS to formulate the terrorist threat posed by citizens allegedly belonging to the sovereign citizen movement.

According to a report by issued by START last month, “sovereign citizens were the top concern of law sovereign enforcement” and ranked ahead of neo-Nazis, the KKK, the patriot movement, and other “idiosyncratic sectarians,” including survivalists, all who allegedly pose a threat to the police and the state according to a survey conducted by the Homeland Security funded organization.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden appealed to legal scholars and immigration advocates Wednesday to provide legal representation for thousands of illegal immigrant children in the U.S., saying the administration’s effort to handle a new surge of deportation cases “is going to be really hard.”

“We need lawyers,” Mr. Biden said in a meeting at the White House. “This is going to be really hard. It was hard before. But this backlog [of cases] has continued to pile up.”

About half of the more than 50,000 children from Central America who have immigrated illegally to the U.S. since last fall don’t have lawyers to represent them in deportation proceedings. Mr. Biden told the audience of about 60 pro-immigration advocates that the administration needs lawyers to help with the “hard decisions” of whether the children deserve to stay in the U.S.

“We need trained lawyers to determine whether or not these kids meet the criteria for refugee status and/or whether or not they are in such jeopardy if they don’t gain at least continued safety and security that they’re going to be sent to something that will [cause] their physical demise,” he said.

A doctor defended himself and others from a violent patient, but he had to break a no-gun policy to do so.

‘More might have died if doctor had not shot gunman” — so read the headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer on July 27. On the previous Thursday, a patient, Richard Plotts, entered the office of his psychiatrist, Lee Silverman, M.D., with his caseworker, Theresa Hunt. Plotts then became very upset and killed Hunt with two shots to her head. While this was happening, Dr. Silverman tried to take cover, drew his handgun, and shot the attacker three times. The doctor suffered slight wounds from bullets that grazed his head and hit his thumb. Staffers then succeeded in subduing the wounded Plotts. He was hospitalized in critical condition and now faces murder charges.

District attorney Jack Whelan said: “If Dr. Silverman did not have the firearm and did not utilize the firearm, he’d be dead today. And other people would be dead.” In fact, the doctor had breached the facility’s “no firearms” policy by carrying a weapon with him to work. The facility released a statement saying that it looked forward to his “return to serving patients at our hospital.”

On August 8, 2014 at approximately 2030 hours, Maryland State Troopers from the Salisbury and Princess Anne Barracks located the runaway juvenile. Assitance from the public was instrumental in locating the juvenile. The juvenile was located in Salisbury, Maryland and has been returned to the proper custodian.

At about 5:15 p.m. on June 17, 1971, in the Oval Office, the president ordered a crime:

I want it implemented on a thievery basis. Goddamn it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.

The burglary he demanded was not the one that would occur exactly one year later at the Democratic National Committee’s office in the Watergate complex. Richard Nixon was ordering a break-in at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, to seize material concerning U.S. diplomacy regarding North Vietnam during the closing weeks of the 1968 presidential campaign.

You hear it all the time. There’s a crisis in higher education. It’s too expensive. Kids are graduating so deep in debt with college loans that they can’t qualify for a mortgage. Heck, they can’t find a job so they can move out of mom & dad’s basement. One thing you never hear is any discussion about cost control.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The mother of three children killed when a sport utility vehicle that police said was carjacked crashed into a group on a north Philadelphia corner last month has died, officials said Friday.

A Temple University Hospital spokeswoman said Keisha Williams, 34, died Thursday night at the hospital, where she had been listed in critical condition since the July 25 crash that killed Keiearra Williams, 15, Thomas Joseph Reed, 10, and Terrance Moore, 7, as they were selling fruit for a church fundraiser.

The children's funeral was held Monday. A family friend who was nearby and the woman who had been carjacked were also injured.

On February 19, 2014, Brian Keith Hensley, age 43, of Wicomico County, Maryland, was convicted by a Wicomico County Jury of Attempted First Degree Murder, Attempted Second Degree Murder, First Degree Assault, Reckless Endangerment, Armed Robbery, CDS Possession (Cocaine & Marijuana), and CDS Paraphernalia. An investigation conducted by the Salisbury Police Department and the Maryland State Police Homicide Unit revealed that on May 16, 2013, Hensley attacked an 18-year-old victim with a vodka bottle while he was asleep in a house on Ohio Avenue. Hensley fractured the skull of his victim during this attack. He also robbed the victim of his wallet, CDS and cell phones. On August 7, 2014, Brian Hensley was sentenced in the Circuit Court for Wicomico County by the Hon. Kathleen Beckstead to a sentence of life in prison for the Attempted First Degree Murder. Hensley received concurrent sentences for the CDS offenses.

Wicomico County State’s Attorney, Matthew A. Maciarello, commended the Salisbury City Police Department and the Maryland State Police Homicide Unit for their work in the investigation and prosecution of this case. Mr. Maciarello also thanked the citizens of Wicomico County who sat on the jury, and Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Kristen Schultz and Deputy State’s Attorney Ella Disharoon, who prosecuted the case.

The Attorney General's Office has decided to retry a Georgetown man on charges of assaulting a police officer who went to the man's home to deliver a traffic ticket. The arresting officer shot defendant Michael Rogers five times during the incident that led to his arrest.

A mistrial was called in June after jurors could not agree on a verdict.

At the first trial, Rogers was charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, a felony, and resisting arrest. However, during jury instruction, Sussex County Superior Court Judge T. Henley Graves dropped the original assault charge to third-degree assault, stating the prosecution failed to prove all elements of the original charge. Third-degree assault is a misdemeanor.

Wednesday on Fox News Channel's "Your World With Neil Cavuto," Border Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera revealed “a loophole” that is allowing murderers to be released into the United States unchecked.

Cabrera said, "Some of these young gang member kids coming in, and there's no criminal history in the United States. We're releasing them out the door and more and more it is frustrating."

"Even if they're admitted gang members. We had a couple admitted to murders in their home country. They were 16-, 17-years old and the United States government thought fit to release them to their parents who are here in the United States." he added.

Cabrera concluded, “They found a loophole with the unaccompanied women and children. We don't have anywhere to house these women and children and if the child has no family back in his home country or claims he doesn't, we have to release him to a parent who is here, and that's where the loophole is, even if he is a confirmed gang member or criminal, even by self-admission, we for some reason don't send them back, we release them into our country."

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley on Thursday reunited with U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez, a former member of the governor’s Cabinet, to make some burritos and talk up the importance of raising the minimum wage.

The event at a Bethesda restaurant was the first time O’Malley (D) had appeared in public with a member of the Obama administration since a dust-up last month over how to handle thousands of unaccompanied migrant children coming across the U.S. border.

Whatever lingering tension remains between the Obama and O’Malley administrations was not on display Thursday, however, as O’Malley and Perez showered one another with praise and spoke about the record of cooperation between the governor and president on numerous other issues.

Yesterday, as part of our ongoing ‘Governing for Results’ series, I had the privilege of touring the Center for Clinical Resources, part of the Western Maryland Health System. I met dedicated health care providers on the tour and we talked about the steps we’re taking to reduce preventable hospitalizations and create a stronger, healthier Maryland.

Hospital visits represent one of the most preventable public health challenges facing our State and the nation. While every person should have access to critical care at hospitals, we’re working to keep more people healthy and reduce the number and length of hospital stays, which in turn reduces costs for families and our health care system.

The O’Malley-Brown Administration set a goal to reduce the rate of preventable hospitalizations by 10 percent by 2015. In 2012, we exceeded that goal, driving down preventable hospitalizations in Maryland by 11.9 percent.

We’ve driven down preventable hospitalizations by investing in innovative ways to reduce costs, improve care, and cover all Marylanders.

The older lady said that she was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day. The older lady went on to explain:

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief(remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the “green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad, the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?

A new study from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, argues that using solar and wind energy may be the most expensive alternatives to carbon-based electricity generation, even though they require no expenditures for fuel.

The paper, by economist Charles Frank, compares the benefits and costs of renewable energy. The benefits range from the lack of emissions to the savings in expenditures for fuels. The costs include the construction and maintenance of these plants, and the drop in power generated when winds are calm or the Sun doesn’t shine.

Frank’s conclusion: Wind and solar power cost far more than anyone expected.

The paper examined four kinds of carbon-free energy – solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear – as well as low-carbon gas generation, and compared them with generators that burn fossil fuels. It also posited a value of $50 per metric ton of reduced carbon emissions and $16 per million BTUs of gas.

A few days ago, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said it’s “probably time” for the Washington Redskins to change their name.

In response to the democratic governor’s definitive stand, a Md. state delegate, Michael Hough (Rep. – Frederick, Washington), has called upon the governor and his lieutenant, Anthony Brown, to hand over their taxpayer-funded Redskins box seats, on the grounds of hypocrisy.

“To me it’s gross hypocrisy that they go to Redskins games on the taxpayer dime and spend thousands on food and drinks, but then attack the team name the minute it benefits them politically,” Hough asserted in a press release, which sites a Baltimore Sun report that O’Malley and Brown have spent thousands in taxpayer dollars on food and drinks at Redskins games over the last couple of years.

“If O’Malley and Brown find the Redskins name so offensive they should give up their taxpayer provided box seats,” Hough stated.

Wyoming, DE – Troopers are currently on the scene of a single engine Piper plane that crashed after landing at Jenkins Airport west of Wyoming.

The incident occurred at approximately 7:08 a.m. this morning as a 62 year old male pilot from New Jersey was making a planned landing at the airport located at 9935 Westville Road. The aircraft, which is a 1980 Piper fixed wing plane, landed on the grassy runway and then continued across Westville Road coming to a stop on the south side of the roadway in an empty yard.

The investigation into this incident is in its early stages and detectives are working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to determine the cause of the crash.

The 62 year old pilot and a 43 year old male passenger from New Jersey were uninjured.

We will be having a large yard sale from 8am - til this Saturday. There will be mens, womens, and baby/toddler (boy) clothes. We will have baby/toddler toys and supplies such as a stroller and play pen. There will be tools, hardware, home decor, glass beaded jewelry and accessories, and furniture. The bigger items include a love seat, antique dresser, antique wooden tea cart, antique cocktail cabinet stocked with glassware, a refrigerator, and a queen size mattress/box spring. The fridge, bed, and love seat will not be present due to the fact that they are being kept elsewhere but I will have photos and prices upon request. Early birds are welcome but we cannot promise everything will be put out before 8am. Hope to see you there!!

Money is money — but it’s a whole lot easier to receive a bunch of it with a check or even cash, than entirely in loose change. That’s how one California man said an insurance company paid him $21,000 in a legal settlement, dropping off more than 16 five-gallon buckets filled with coins.

The 73-year-old man filed a lawsuit in 2012 against an employee of the insurance company, claiming he’d been physically assaulted, reports NBC Los Angeles.

After the two parties reached a settlement, the insurance company paid up: The man’s attorney says eight employees of the insurance company showed up to his office in a van bearing five-gallon containers full of coins, and left them in the waiting room.

In the latest study to confirm that fish is brain food, Pitt researchers have found eating baked or broiled fish once a week can keep you mentally sharp as you grow older, reducing the risk of developing dementia and other mental health disorders.

The findings, reported by scientists with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, add to growing evidence that lifestyle factors contribute to brain health later in life.

"Our study shows that people who ate a diet that included baked or broiled, but not fried, fish have larger brain volumes in regions associated with memory and cognition," said James T. Becker, a professor of psychiatry at Pitt. "We did not find a relationship between omega-3 levels and these brain changes, which surprised us a little. It led us to conclude that we were tapping into a more general set of lifestyle factors that were affecting brain health of which diet is just one part."

Remember when a cup of coffee was almost a guilty pleasure? In the past, coffee has been blamed for everything from heart disease and premature death to stunting your growth. It turns out that the "experts" didn't know beans about coffee. Recent research shows that drinking even up to six cups a day won't increase your risk of heart problems, cancer, or dying prematurely from any disease. In fact, a study found that Americans get more health-promoting antioxidants from coffee than anything else, because our bodies absorb antioxidants found in coffee better than those in fruits and vegetables.

In the very latest study, researchers at Cornell University found that coffee protects eyes from retinal degeneration due to glaucoma, aging, and diabetes. Although coffee contains only about 1 percent caffeine, it contains 7 percent to 9 percent chlorogenic acid (CLA), a powerful antioxidant. In the study, mice were treated with nitric oxide, which creates sight-damaging free radicals, but mice that were pretreated with CLA didn't develop retinal damage.